CBD And Cancer: Can The Natural Plant Extract Be Used As A Treatment?
There is a lot of buzz around CBD and its potential to treat cancer. But what does the research say? Can CBD help to fight this deadly disease? CBD is one of over 100 compounds found in cannabis plants. It is non-psychoactive, meaning it doesn’t get you high. And it has been shown to be effective in treating many diseases, including epilepsy. Many people are now starting to use CBD as an alternative medicine for various health ailments. For cancer, it has not yet been approved as a treatment by the FDA. But multiple studies show CBD can be effective at killing cancer cells, and this has led to more clinical trials on humans using CBD for treating cancer ailments.
There is a general lack of knowledge regarding cannabinoids and cancer. However, scientists are working day and night to understand the role of CBD and cannabinoids in cancer cell death. The exact mechanisms by which it works is still not known for sure. But as more research comes out, we know that CBD has neuroprotective properties which help regulate anti-cancer immune responses within the body.
According to most research conducted on animals, they have shown that CBD is a promising cancer treatment, as it may increase the long-term effectiveness of conventional chemotherapies. It also has anti-inflammatory properties that can help reduce swelling and pain associated with advanced tumors. However, these are not enough to conclude whether CBD can be used as a cancer treatment. Therefore, more studies need to be conducted on humans to see if CBD can be used as an adjunct treatment for cancer.
How Does CBD Help Patients with Cancer
Despite the need for more research, there are some case studies that show how CBD can help patients with cancer in the future.
During a study conducted in 2016 by researchers to determine how CBD can be used as an anticancer agent, they got positive results from the animal samples used. They found out that the endocannabinoid system played a role in preventing tumor growth. Unfortunately, since the research elements were animal models and test-tube samples, more research is needed to determine if CBD can be used as a cancer treatment for humans.
The National Cancer Institute also conducted a study to determine if CBD can be used as an anticancer drug. They found that it has the ability to inhibit the growth and spread of tumors in humans, which is why more clinical trials are needed for this purpose.
A literature review conducted in 2019 to determine if CBD had the power to treat cancer, found that CBD may reduce tumor growth, kill cancer cells and prevent the spread of tumors through a process called tumorigenesis. This means that there are hopes that CBD will be able to help in the fight against cancer in the near future, and as a result, the mortality rate for cancer patients will decrease.
Can CBD Relieve Cancer Treatment Side Effects?
Aside from helping patients with cancer, CBD can also help to relieve some of the common side effects that come with chemotherapy and radiation therapy. These include nausea, pain, increase or decrease in appetite, and insomnia.
Nausea: When a study was conducted in 2016, it found that one of the CBD-rich medication, Sativex, has the ability to suppress nausea experienced post-chemotherapy sessions.
Pain: Chemo and radiation therapies are often accompanied by pain. However, CBD has been found in the research conducted in 2012 to effectively relieve chronic pain conditions such as fibromyalgia and multiple sclerosis.
Appetite: A review that was conducted in 2018 showed that CBD could help reduce high appetite levels associated with cancer treatments that cause the patient to have abnormal hunger.
Sleep: After a group of scientists embarked on a study in 2012 to determine how CBD can affect sleep, they found that it can decrease insomnia and improve quality of life for cancer patients.
Use of Cannabis in the treatment of epilepsy
After the discovery of cannabis as a medicinal product, many people opted for it compared to any other medicine. Many patients want to experiment on their ailments by using cannabis in order to test the validity of this product. Epilepsy has been stated to be among the many diseases that cannabis can treat, but in order to do this, the cannabis is processed and made into a mixture of cannabinoids as it cannot be used in its raw form. This substance in cannabis has proven to be helpful to the manifestation of epilepsy patients.
How this substance function is still not clear so far, and scientists are performing a lot of experiments in order to understand the effect of this product on the body and how it treats epilepsy while hindering seizures.
Epilepsy is a medical condition that affects the neurology of the brain hence bringing about atypical brain activity. Some of the symptoms include loss of consciousness, an exhibition of irregular behavior, and sensations to the patients. Its most common characteristic is the repetitious seizure occurrence with different effects and at different degrees as a result of the affected parts of the brain`s circulatory system causing added electrical actions.
According to research, 1 out of 26 people in America have epilepsy. From the numbers, it can be right to state that this disease is not genetically inherited as 2/3 of these patients lack a background on the disorder. Out of all death cases of children, 34% is said to be either epilepsy-related or from the accidents that occur during the seizures. The gravity of this disease is rather critical, and the fact that no curative drug has yet been discovered is the leading reason why epileptic patients die.
Seizure disorders occur in different intensities, one being the enormous disruptor that cannot be controlled and poses a great danger to the life of the patient and the mild disorder that can be controlled by the use of medicine. All patients are unique and experience these seizures in different ways having totally different outcomes in them. This factor has made it difficult for scientists to come up with a treatment.
People have started using cannabis for the treatment of epilepsy recently after the discovery of its great treatment effect on seizures. This treatment has worked for many people, both young and old, and they have shared their stories on the same. Charlotte Figi is a great supporter of the use of CBD in the treatment of epilepsy after recovering from Dravet Syndrome, which is one of the forms of epilepsy.
The fact that cannabis has been proven to be medicinal is pushing governments to do more research and to make the drug legal. Learning institutions have been granted a go-ahead to start research on the effects of cannabis and its medicinal properties. All these trials are focused on determining how the substance works in the body and how it is able to treat epilepsy.
Dr. Francis M. states that the world should be enthusiastic about the therapeutic properties of cannabis, but the previous limitations placed on the research of the drug have acted as a hindrance to it being used to the maximum.
According to history, cannabis is the most extensively used drug globally for its medicinal characteristics despite all the restrictions placed on it. The research on cannabis is considered very important as it may help save a lot of lives.
The curative substance in cannabis is similar to one that is found in the human endocannabinoid system. The use of CBD supplements the shortage in the human body hence balancing the bulk neurological functions.
Anyone going through any form of epilepsy should consult a medical marijuana health officer to receive help as it is becoming easier to help epileptic patients with the newly discovered medication.